


Better Than I Know Myself

by TheVeganTargaryen



Series: Time Is Out of Joint [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Amnesia, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, morally grey everyone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-10 16:45:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5593528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVeganTargaryen/pseuds/TheVeganTargaryen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When fighting against magical forces, Oliver’s hit with a botched memory spell (and a head injury) that sends him straight to the hospital, but when he wakes up, he can’t remember anything past the Queen’s Gambit sinking. Unsure of how long Oliver’s memory will be gone, Team Arrow decides not to tell him about his superhero alter ego. Meanwhile, Oliver is left wondering if he can really be the man everyone tells him he’s become and adapt to the many, sudden changes to his life, including the woman he's supposed to be in love with. But when his memory starts to return with painful and potentially deadly flashbacks, Felicity looks into curing him but finds that the only way to save his life might be to finish the memory spell and erase his memories of her—and the Green Arrow—forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Name is Nobody

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited to share this story with all of you! Special thanks to the Olicity Fic Bang admins for hosting this event! Writing this has been a labor of love, and it's a story I've been wanting to tell for a long time. This will be part one of a series; it's 10 chapters, and I will be posting once a week on Saturdays until Part 1 is finished! Reviews always appreciated, or stop by and chat with me on tumblr @vigilantexarcher.
> 
>  Also the amazing artwork is by @mel-loves-all (tumblr). Beta'd by one of my closest friends, Gretta, who holds me to the highest of standards (I can only try my best to live up to them).

 

>   
>  _Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns_  
>  _driven time and again off course._  
>  \- Homer, The Odyssey

 

Oliver’s first thought before he even opened his eyes was that his head hurt. Like… _really_ hurt. Not bad-hangover-level hurt (though God only knew he’d had enough of those to last a lifetime), but actual, injury-level hurt. Despite his closed eyes, he could tell there was a light on in whatever room he’d ended up in, the bed less than comfortable. What had he even _done_ last night? Shifting to cover his eyes, he realized his head wasn’t the only thing that hurt, various sore spots on his body flaring up.

The memory of exactly what had happened washed over, crashed into him like the waves on the Gambit just before Sara had been pulled under...

“Sara!”

His eyes snapped open as he called out for her, and he was rewarded with the view of a sterile hospital room, machines beeping increasingly quickly as his heart hammered against his chest, monitoring the fact that he was still alive.

He wasn’t alone in the room. “Where’s Sara?” he demanded instantly. “My dad—the captain—” They had both been on the boat, too. Oliver hadn’t seen them get to the life raft safely… _Oliver_ didn’t remember getting to the life raft safely. “Where am I? How did I get here?” The questions fell from his mouth almost faster than he could think of them, tripping over his words as his brain struggled to follow his body into consciousness.

“Oliver, everything’s okay. You’re okay.” The other, sole occupant of the room spoke to him in the kind of soothing voice he’d expect from a hospital nurse. She knew his name, at least, and Oliver didn’t bother to wonder how (most people did). Even as the questions _“Where’s Dad? Where’s Sara?”_ played over and over again in his head on a loop, he tried to breathe—take in his surroundings. “You’re in the hospital.”

He was in a hospital. Sara and his father were probably in their own rooms. Any minute now his nurse would get to the relevant details—

—Except she wasn’t dressed like a nurse. No, the blonde sitting at his bedside was in street clothes, not scrubs. And she’d been sitting there, waiting. “Who…are you?” he blurted out. Not exactly his finest moment. How disoriented _was_ he?

“What?” She looked so panic-stricken, so hurt in that one moment, that Oliver might have believed he was actually supposed to know her. “Oliver, it’s me. It’s Felicity.”

Felicity. The name wasn’t ringing any bells. “Did we…sleep together and I didn’t call you or something?” Sounded about right. He guessed she was attractive enough, if he’d wanted a break from the willowy model type he normally gravitated toward. “Because I’m not gonna lie, Felicity, this is a _really_ bad time for me.” Who had even let her _in_? And had his voice always sounded just on the edge of manic?

Something akin to comprehension dawned over her features, and the color visibly drained from her face. “Oliver, what’s the last thing you remember?” she asked slowly, like someone would address a really scared, cornered animal.

“My family’s boat going down in a storm,” he snapped petulantly because he really hated the whole patronizing thing she had going for her. “And clearly someone rescued us, and we were brought…here…” he glanced around, quickly taking in more context clues. A magazine on his bedside table. In English. The call button and instructions by the bed. English. The TV on in the background playing some clearly American sitcom he’d never seen before. Exactly none of the hallmarks of whatever hospital would be closest to the sea off the coast of China where the boat had gone down. “Did we… did we get moved back to Starling?”

But that wouldn’t make sense. Because if they’d gotten moved back to Starling, his mother would be there. Tommy, his sister, Laurel—no, Laurel would be with Sara. “Where’s Sara?” he demanded again. “Where’s my father?” But the look on Felicity’s face spoke volumes, and the giant knot that had been building in his gut from the minute he woke up gave way to the kind of bottomless pit that usually meant he was about to wake up from a terrible nightmare, and he knew exactly what she was going to say next.

“The Queen’s Gambit sank almost nine years ago. Oliver, it’s 2016.”

That was the absolute last thing he’d expected to hear.

A thousand questions crowded his mind, even as his chest grew tight and uncomfortable, but before he could ask anything, the unfamiliar woman told him she was going to go get a doctor, and maybe it was a good thing she was getting a doctor because he was pretty sure he was going to pass out and also no one told him where Sara was but if they’d survived the Gambit and that was years ago maybe they weren’t even friends anymore and maybe Laurel had found out and where were his parents and…

Oliver had no idea how long he spent spiraling deeper into his own confusion, but by the time the doctor had joined them, he was hardly hearing the words being spoken to him— _at_ him, really. They hit the wall his brain had put up while it attempted to process and short-circuited. The doctor could have told him he was the first man to ever time travel and the experiment was a success, and Oliver wouldn’t have even had the capacity to respond.

Eventually, some part of his subconscious mind must have recognized the tone shift into a question, and he finally pulled himself back into the room with the other two. His doctor was another unfamiliar face: a thin, middle-aged man with graying hair, wearing an expression of clinical sympathy. “Can you tell me your full name?”

“Oliver Jonas Queen.”

“Birthday?”

“May 16, 1985.”

The routine questions that Oliver knew the answers to were over all too quickly after confirming his place of birth, his parents’ names, and other like details. They grounded him but only a little, and his hands were still shaking when they moved on.

“Can you tell me what year it is?”

“I thought it was 2007.” Beside him, Felicity had retaken her seat at his bedside. She was fidgeting with her hands, and more than once Oliver spotted her moving like she was going to reach out to him but apparently thinking better of it.

“And can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

“I was on my family’s boat.” This whole experience still felt surreal, dreamlike, like Oliver was watching it happen to someone else. It couldn’t be _him_ who had missed almost a decade of his life. “We were off the coast of China somewhere, and there was—there was a storm. The boat sank, and I was with my friend Sara. And she...she was pulled underwater and…” He trailed off, concentrating as hard as he could, but everything after that moment faded into a blur. “That’s all I remember,” he admitted. “She”—he jerked his head in Felicity’s direction—“told me it’s actually 2016.”

He waited, hopefully—foolishly—for his doctor to tell him that’s exactly what had happened and no time at all had passed (and that the woman named Felicity probably just needed some kind of psych eval). No reassurances came.

“Mr. Queen, it’s April 5th, 2016. You were brought in after sustaining injuries from a motorcycle accident, including a head injury.”

“What does this mean?” Felicity spoke up before Oliver could. He wanted to ask her to leave, but if what they were telling him was true, he wondered if his future self would want that. The doctor didn’t seem to mind her presence or share information, and she wasn’t family—

—He _really_ hoped he hadn’t fucked up his life and gotten married. But that was a problem that could wait.

“First we’re going to need to assess the type of amnesia you’re experiencing.”

“There’s more than one type?” Felicity asked, and Oliver didn’t have it in him to get bothered by her taking the lead. His head _was_ pounding, and he was still reeling from the information being thrown at him.

“Given your symptoms thus far, Mr. Queen, it would appear you’re experiencing retrograde amnesia, but I’m going to need to ask you a series of questions to determine if your semantic memory is being affected as well as your episodic. Occasionally retrograde amnesia can be accompanied by anterograde amnesia, which means you would have trouble forming new memories. That would most likely be the case if the amnesia has a physical cause. We’re going to have to do a CT scan to determine whether or not the memory loss was caused by brain damage.”

“What else would it be caused by?” This time it was Oliver who asked the question. The doctor’s words were going right over his head, but whether or not that was because he had some kind of brain damage he really couldn’t say.

“If we can’t find a physical cause over a CT scan or an MRI, there’s a possibility your memory loss is psychological.”

Oliver couldn’t help the sarcastic laugh that escaped him. “Right. I hit my head, and now I’m traumatized and repressing memories for the past decade? Do shrinks pay you commission by referral or something?”

“ _Oliver_.” Felicity’s voice contained a warning, and Oliver was once again tempted to get her out of the room.

“It doesn’t quite work that way, Mr. Queen.” The doctor, to his credit, was patient. But then again, Oliver expected no less. The people who knew about the size of his trust fund tended to treat him well (and _everyone_ knew about the size of his trust fund).

“You know what? I really don’t care how it works. Can we get on with the tests so we can figure out if I’m going to get my memory back?”

And get on with the tests they did. Oliver was forced to answer another, more grueling round of questions about various years of his life, all of which he answered perfectly as long as they required knowledge from earlier than the year 2007. They gave him three words to remember before they asked him the questions, and after, when they asked him to repeat said words, he did so without a problem. He was given scenes on flashcards that looked like they came from a bad children’s book and asked to put them in order (a three-year-old could have done it). Then there were more questions covering general knowledge—basic facts that anyone who’d grown up in the United States and graduated high school would be able to answer. Only after all of that was he actually taken for the CT scan.

All of it was a giant waste of time.

At least, that was all Oliver could hear when the doctor reported his results back to him. “So what you’re saying is that you can’t find any brain damage, and I answered all your questions with no problem, so it’s just all in my head? You have no better explanation than that?”

“The good news is that means your memory will most likely return,” the doctor replied, diplomatically ignoring Oliver’s anger.

“Well, do you have an ETA on that? Because this really isn’t working for me.”

“Oliver,” Felicity warned again at the same time the doctor insisted, “I’m sorry, but it’s not that simple.”

“Then are we done here? Can I go home?” Where was home for him now?

“We need to keep you at least overnight for observation, and we can probably dismiss you in the morning.”

Oliver shifted uncomfortably in the bed. It felt like it had been hours already, and he needed to move. To get up and _do_ something. To take back what little control of his life he had left and get the hell out of there and find people who mattered to him. “Can’t I check out of here like… against doctor’s orders or something? Because I want to do that.”

“I would strongly advise against it.”

“But it’s possible,” Oliver pressed.

The doctor shook his head and scribbled something else down on his clipboard. “And I am required to let you know that if you check out against medical advice, your insurance might not cover your treatment.”

He laughed; whoever this guy was (and he’d probably introduced himself, back when Oliver was panicking too much to take anything in), he clearly didn’t know who _Oliver_ was. “Yeah, that’s not gonna be an issue for—”

“You know what, Doctor Mills?” Felicity piped up, speaking over him. When Oliver glanced over at her, she was sliding her phone back in her purse and standing up. “Can you just give me and Oliver a couple of minutes?” There was a tightness to her tone, like she was losing patience with the whole situation, and Oliver very much wanted to ask her how the hell she’d be feeling if she were the one in the bed with a decade of her life gone and unable to go back. “He’ll be staying here tonight. Is he allowed to have more visitors?”

The doctor just nodded, giving her an approving look, and Oliver was really starting to hate that whoever this woman was, she and the doctor seemed perfectly fine with overriding his own medical decisions. “The hospital doesn’t have set hours, so he’s allowed more visitors, but I’d recommend not overwhelming him.”

“I’m right here,” he grumbled, crossing his arms.

The doctor finished writing something on the clipboard that went back at the end of his bed then walked to the door, Felicity following and wearing that same, tight smile she hadn’t really dropped the entire time he’d known her, and she shut the door, effectively leaving the two of them alone in the room together. The first thing she did was round on Oliver. “I understand that this is really hard for you,” she said, “but you can’t just check out of here against medical advice, Oliver. You had a brain injury—”

“Apparently not.”

“— _Still_! You got hurt! You could have been killed. Do you know how close we were to almost losing you?”

Fucking Christ; how many times did he have to say it? “I don’t know because I can’t exactly remember the motorcycle accident that was apparently traumatizing enough I lost all my memories for the past ten years! And it clearly wasn’t a big deal because other than my non-existent brain damage? I’m pretty sure I’m fine.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not!” She could be pretty loud for such a tiny person, Oliver decided. “And Oliver, there’s other reasons you don’t want to check out right now. First? Well, a lot’s...changed since what you remember.”

“And?” He sat up a little straighter. This was where she was going to tell him where his family was. He knew it; it had to be.

“Well, first there’s the whole insurance thing.” She bit her lower lip, getting a speck of bright pink lipstick on her teeth.

“Felicity, I could buy this entire hospital if I wanted. A few thousand for an MRI is nothing if it means I can just get out of here and go home.”

“It’s not… quite… that simple.” And that was how Felicity launched into an awkward, stumbling story of how Oliver took over and subsequently lost his family’s company. And how it was renamed Palmer Tech and how somehow _Felicity_ herself had taken it over. And that led to more questions that Oliver didn’t even really need to be asking anymore because apparently once Felicity really got the opportunity to start talking, she ran with it and never shut up.

It would have annoyed Oliver under different circumstances. This time, though, he needed all the information he could get. Still, she seemed to be straying away from anything truly important.

“Felicity.” He finally interrupted her when she was explaining about some undertake earthquake thing that had led to his mother getting _arrested_ (which had stemmed from the explanation of who Isabel Rochev was which had stemmed from the explanation of who Slade Wilson was and why there were masked vigilante superheroes who guarded the city, and Oliver was thinking maybe Doctor Mills should come back and take Oliver down for a psych eval because this definitely could not have been real life).

“Sorry.” She was actually blushing just a little. “I keep getting sidetracked, and there’s probably a million things you want to know and—”

“I’d settle for knowing what happened to my dad and Sara.”

“I’m so sorry, Oliver.” And here it was. The finality of the apology settled in his stomach like a stone. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to keep pretending he didn’t know. “After the boat went down? You made it to an island. And you… you spent five years there before they found you. Your dad didn’t make it. He died when the boat went down.”

“Oh.” _Oh_. It was such a pathetic word, but he felt so hollow he couldn’t come up with a better one. Maybe it was a good thing he couldn’t remember that. Or maybe it was just as terrible as it sounded because this was the second time he was hearing about his father’s death for the first time. He’d already done this, hadn’t he? He’d done it, and he didn’t remember, and now he had to do it again, and even the fact that he’d apparently become the real life version of a Tom Hanks movie paled in comparison to the news that he was never going to see his father again.

“Sara’s alive; she survived.”

“Sara survived? Can I… can I see her?”

For someone who had just given him the first piece of good news he’d heard all night, Felicity looked remarkably close to tears. “I called her when you were in for your MRI. She’s out of town right now and doesn’t know when she can get back, but she will as soon as possible.”

“Oh,” he said again, probably more disappointed than he had any right to be.

“Do you know where my mom and Thea are? What about Tommy? And Laurel?”

He hadn’t been expecting Laurel, really. She'd have long since found out about his affair with Sara. But Felicity's answer made it sound like Laurel was at least still in his life, which was a relief he probably didn’t have any right to feel. But Tommy. And his mother. Felicity had started with the “I’m so sorry” line, and she didn’t even get halfway through the explanations of how he’d lost them, too, when he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Get out. Just… get out.” It wasn’t diplomatic. It wasn’t nice or understandable, and all Felicity had done was answer his questions and he knew that, but it was the final straw. It was the final straw after a night that had taken literal years off his life and changed everything he ever thought he knew, and he’d spent the entire thing with a stranger who hadn’t gotten around to telling him who _she_ was to him, and he was supposed to hear that his best friend and both of his parents were gone, and he’d never talk to them again, and twenty-four hours ago he’d seen all three of them. Spoken to all three of them. Except it wasn’t really twenty-four hours, and his best friend—and his parents—were rotting in the ground somewhere and why was his vision blurring oh fuck were those tears and his stomach was twisting and he had to get up and out of the bed and then he was losing whatever dinner he’d eaten nine years in the future into the wastebasket next to his bed except it only made him feel emptier.

He was alone, at least, when he finally stood up again, every muscle in his body protesting the movement. Oliver supposed that would only be natural after a bike accident, but it felt different. He’d crashed his bike before, and none of this felt like fresh bruising or road rash or the kind of soreness that went with any of it. His right knee ached and nearly gave out when he put pressure on it, and his lower back felt wrong, like he really needed to stretch or something. It was the skin, he decided, as he attempted to do just that. It pulled and felt tight, and when he reached back to try and massage it out, but he jerked his hands away as soon as he tried. It was...it felt _wrong_. Bumped and twisted and horrifically marred, and there were spots that were numb, too, unable to feel the press of his fingertips.

His stomach churned uncomfortably again. He ignored it. Oliver knew he didn’t have much time before Felicity came back. And he had to get out of there. He had to see for himself that everything they’d told him was true. _You shouldn’t believe them,_ an inner voice hinted. _You can’t trust them; you can’t trust anyone._

It wasn’t paranoia if someone was actually out to get him.

There was a bag in the corner of the room, and Oliver searched it, frantic, tugging out clothes that looked like they’d fit him. He didn’t have time to worry about the fact that the sweats and worn t-shirt weren’t something he’d ever normally walk around in. He very carefully avoided looking down while he changed, pointedly ignoring that he probably wouldn’t like what he found if what he felt on his back was an accurate preview.

He could hear muffled voices in the hallway, but he wasn’t so worried about that; whoever it was, he felt reasonably sure he could outrun them, could make it out of the hospital. He had to get out of the hospital.

Still, he just barely cracked the door open first, pressing himself against the wall next to it, listening.

“—doesn’t remember any of us,” Felicity was saying.

“He’ll remember me,” a second woman argued back, and she sounded so familiar, but he couldn’t place the voice. Their tones were hushed, and he had to strain to hear them properly.

“Well, not _now_ you.”

There was a sigh from the second woman. “I know. And you’re sure… right thing by not telling him about…”

He could only make out every few words clearly, and he wished there was a way to get closer without alerting them to his presence.

“Yes,” Felicity affirmed. “He needs time to… telling him would be a huge risk.”

“But it’s _Oliver_. And I...I know what it’s like to be kept in the dark like that.” Whoever the other woman was, Oliver felt a surge of gratitude toward her.

“I don’t like it anymore than you do,” Felicity countered. “But it has to be this way. For now.”

All thoughts of leaving the hospital had vanished in favor of his need to know what else he’d been missing, what else Felicity and this mystery woman felt necessary to hide from him. Like he couldn’t _handle_ it.

He stepped out into the hallway, every hotheaded argument dying on his lips as he laid eyes on the second woman. Aside from her short brown hair and the fact that she couldn’t have been older than he was—than he _thought_ he was—she was the spitting image of his mother. “Thea?”

Both women turned to look at him, and before he knew it, the brunette—his _sister_ , his formerly 12-year-old sister—all but launched herself into his arms. “Ollie!”

He held onto her like a drowning man would a lifeli— _Don’t think about drowning._

“You had us all really worried,” Thea continued when she finally pulled back. She’d grown up so much. If it was nine years later, she was in her early 20’s, and he’d missed everything. The only familiar face he’d seen, and she was a stranger. “I don’t know how much Felicity caught you up on…”

 _Apparently not everything,_ he wanted to say, but he held his tongue. Thea was the first tangible, undeniable proof he had that no one was making this up. It wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t going to wake up on the Gambit and laugh it off with Sara. This was his life, and he was never going to wake up in a world before he’d lost practically everything again.

His heart sank.

He searched for the right words and settled for, “As much as she could. But you did leave out one thing,” he added, this time directing his words to Felicity, who was hovering just out of reach and looking extremely uncomfortable as she fidgeted with the sleeve of her blouse.

“What’s that?” she asked, and Oliver wondered if it was his imagination, knowing what she’d said in the hallway, that made him think she sounded guilty.

“Who _are you_ to me? Are we… I mean… You were allowed to come visit me in the hospital. We’re not…”

Felicity’s eyes widened behind her glasses as the implications of his words sunk in. “Married? No. No, we’re not married. Not yet. Not that I’m saying being married to you would be a bad thing. In fact, it would pretty much be the exact _opposite_ of a bad thing… which I’m not saying to put any pressure on you!” She scrambled for words, and, despite himself, Oliver felt a smile tug at the corner of his lips for the first time that evening. “Not that you’d feel any pressure because you don’t even know me, but…”

“Felicity,” Thea interrupted gently before glancing back up at Oliver. “She does this a lot; you’ll get used to it.”

“Right. Sorry. We’re not married. We’re just… in a relationship.” She paused and seemed to rethink her words before adding, “A kind of serious one. We’re engaged, actually.”

Engaged. So he _had_ fucked up his life and decided to get married. And now that she mentioned it, there was a large, glittering diamond ring on her finger. How had he not noticed that before? (He supposed he could forgive himself, given the magnitude of everything else that was going on.)

“Oh.” He schooled his features into a carefully neutral expression, one perfected after years of the world’s most boring high society functions. “So when I leave, it’ll be…”

“...with me, yeah.”

He had a decision to make. He could press them for the truth now, make them tell him what they were discussing in the hall—what information they wanted to refuse him about his own life. Or he could bide his time, play along and make an effort to adapt to his new life and figure it out on his own.

 _You can’t trust anyone,_ his subconscious reminded him, and Oliver wondered how this kind of deep-seated mistrust had become so ingrained in him that even amnesia hadn’t shaken it.

Probably with good reason.

So he flashed Felicity a subdued smile. “Then do you think you could take me home?”


	2. Stories Better Never Told

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver goes home with Felicity and begins to learn things about his new life he's not so fond of. Meanwhile, Team Arrow starts to investigate what happened to Oliver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it Saturday already??? I may update my posting day to be on Fridays, but as of right now, updates will still be once per week on Saturdays. I really enjoyed writing this chapter, but it’s only chapter 2, so hang in there! We’ve got a bumpy ride ahead.

Felicity refused to take him home that night.

He’d tried asking nicely. He’d tried asking repeatedly. He’d tried getting angry with her. All of it to no avail. She ran his father’s company now and was his entire source of income. She controlled things like if he’d be able to pay off medical bills without insurance (and apparently checking out of the hospital that same night would be “money not well spent”). He was entirely dependent on her. He needed her. 

He hated it. 

Oliver hated everything about who he’d become in this new life, and it hadn’t even been 24 hours. Still, there was that small matter of what he’d overheard in the hall, and he thought maybe he could play along long enough to figure everything out, put things in order, and get his _real_ life back. 

They finally left the hospital the next morning, Oliver with an initial appointment booked with a psychologist to which he had every intention of not showing up. They climbed into the back of a car with Felicity babbling something he didn’t quite listen to about why she’d hired a driver even though they were usually unnecessary. And then they began the trip to a home Oliver had never seen. 

“The city looks different,” he commented, trying to hide how much the changed streets unnerved him. 

“An earthquake and two terrorist attacks will do that,” Felicity replied wryly. He glanced back at her only to find her watching him. 

“Right.” He shifted his gaze back to the window, trying to ignore how the car suddenly felt two sizes too small—too closed in. As if the city was granting him some kind of lifeline, he spotted a familiar Italian restaurant and seized the potential topic of conversation. “At least Toscani’s is still there. They’ve got the best deep dish in the city,” he offered, casting another look back at her only to be met with what looked like amused skepticism. “No, seriously, it’s the _best_ , right?” 

“I wouldn’t know,” she replied after a small but tension-filled pause. “We’ve never been.” 

“We’ll have to go.” 

The invitation hung in the air between them, unanswered. 

In the grand scheme of things, Oliver inviting a girl for pizza was just about the tamest thing he’d _ever_ invited a girl to come do with him, but he supposed things were different when said girl was his fiancée he didn’t remember getting from a life he didn’t remember living. 

Either way, he decided, she looked far too surprised, if her slightly parted lips and raised eyebrows were any indication. Was she not expecting him to want anything to do with her? (Maybe she was wise to set the bar low.) Or was he that bad at being the guy she was supposed to marry that the idea of dinner at an only-semi-decent restaurant was unfathomable? (He knew he was good in bed but not good enough to get away with _that_ little of an effort.) Or had he just had a fit of insanity in the ~~future~~ present and given up pizza? (Laughable at best.) 

The silence stretched on, making him uncomfortable, and he seized the next opportunity to say something—anything—to break it. Panic hummed just under the surface of his thoughts, and he delved into the superficial to avoid it. “Hey, there’s that club Tommy and I got kicked out of once. Surprised it’s still there.” 

Felicity gave a small, wry laugh. “And why am I not surprised? If I had to guess, I’d say you’ve been kicked out of every club in the city at _least_ once.” 

“But never outright banned.” Paparazzi tended to follow him and Tommy wherever they went; clubs liked that. It was good for business. 

“I know for a fact that’s not true.” 

“Oh?” He wondered if he was forgetting something or if he just didn’t know about it yet. Shifting in his seat, he turned to face her rather than the unfamiliar skyline. 

“You told me you got banned from Poison once.” 

“Poison? Stupid name for a club.” 

Felicity shrugged. “I don’t know. You said something about Max Fuller owning it, and I didn’t ask.” 

“That makes more sense now,” he admitted and then, at Felicity’s raised eyebrow, added, “I kind of slept with his fiancée.” 

“Seriously?” Thinly-veiled disgust colored her tone. 

She really wasn’t going to like what he had to say next. “At the rehearsal dinner.” 

“You know what? I actually have some work I’ve got to get done.” She turned her attention to the large purse at her side, rummaging through it and finally pulling out some kind of tiny computer-like thing that looked more like just a screen in a case that had an attached keyboard. Felicity immediately began typing furiously, alternating between using the keyboard and actually swiping items directly on the screen themselves. 

He watched her silently for a moment, the questions building up that were easier to focus on than memories of Starling City. Finally he had to speak, powering through the tension that was radiating off her in waves. “What is that?” 

“What’s what?” 

“Your computer… thing.” It looked vaguely familiar, like he’d seen something like it before but couldn’t place the memory. For an instant, hope sprang up that if it at least looked familiar, maybe other stuff would start to do so as well. Maybe his memory would come back sooner than he thought. 

“My iPad?” Glancing down at it with what looked to be confusion crossing her features, she examined it for a moment before her expression was replaced by one of dawning comprehension. “ _Oh_. You… these didn’t come out until a few years after what you remember.” She hit a couple of keys and then handed it over to him. “Try it. It’s kind of like if an iPhone and a laptop had a baby. You do remember iPhones, right?” 

“Kind of. They were really new when I—when the boat went down. But this does look a little familiar,” he added, glancing up from playing with the touch screen. “Maybe that means something.” 

He watched her expression fall. “As much as I’m not exactly used to being the glass-half-empty one in our relationship, remember Doctor Mills said you might experience things like that? That certain details that have crossed over into semantic memory instead of episodic memory might have been retained.” 

Oliver was beginning to hate all these discussions of types of memory and why his brain wouldn’t work right. “I don’t think I was paying attention for that one,” he confessed. “Too busy taking in… all of this.” He handed Felicity back her tablet, not feeling much like exploring new things anymore. 

They passed the rest of the car ride in silence. 

It didn’t take long before they were being dropped off at an unfamiliar building, taking the elevator up to the top floor and stopping in front of #10. 

“Well, this is it,” Felicity said, turning the key in three separate locks before opening the door. “Home, sweet home.” 

They walked into an airy, open concept loft with exposed brick walls. The space was decorated sparsely, but there was a homey feel to it that, Oliver had to admit, was often missing from the ornately over-stuffed Queen Mansion. Still, it was a far cry from the almost 50,000 square feet of his former home; the place practically felt claustrophobic, even with the high ceilings and the second floor balcony that overlooked the main living space. 

“It’s kinda small.” He made no effort to keep the derisive note out of his tone as he wandered further inside, looking around. He could see the entire first floor from where he stood. Great. Apparently privacy was a thing of the past, and just when he needed it, too. 

Behind him, Felicity finished entering an alarm code and shut the front door, locking it behind her. “Yeah, well, it’s just the two of us living here.” 

“Still.” Oliver shrugged. Now that he was on his feet again, the various aches and pains that had been plaguing his body since last night had flooded back with a vengeance. Even his shoulders, with the simple movement, were sore and cramping. “Do we have a shower?” He said it, and then realized how ridiculous the question sounded. 

Chuckling, Felicity returned, “No, Oliver. We bought the one place in Star City with no bathroom.” 

(Star City. Right. Because renaming the city was apparently something that had been a high priority for spending people’s tax dollars in the wake of—what had Felicity said, again—three terrorist attacks. He would have been self-righteously pissed off if he did things like pay his own taxes.) 

“Where is it? I feel disgusting.” And because he was sad and lonely and all that other bullshit and because he figured he might as well get acquainted with his new fiancée, he glanced her over and added with a grin, “You could join me if you want.” 

“No,” was her abrupt reply, and Oliver’s grin faltered. “I mean, not, ‘No, I don’t want to,’ but, ‘No, I don’t think it’s a good idea right now,’” she hastily continued. “I’d basically have to be _dead_ not to want you, but not like this. Because you barely know me, and I kinda, sorta feel like I barely know you?” 

“I know.” Honestly, he could respect that. “We’re both just kind of stuck in a bad situation. I just…” He took a step toward her, close enough that he could reach out and take her hand, which he did. Hers was much smaller and smoother than his own, her nails painted as vibrantly pink as her lipstick. “I feel like maybe we should be trying to make the best of it,” he said, looking up and meeting her eyes as he did so. 

For a moment—just a moment—she smiled, and he thought maybe she was going to agree with him. But then the smile faltered, and her eyebrows creased, and somehow he’d clearly veered off the intended course. “Aren’t you… I don’t want to bring up the elephant in the room here, but you woke up thinking you were in a relationship with a woman you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with. Can you honestly tell me you’re not in love with Laurel right now?” 

Something deep in his gut twisted uncomfortably when she said Laurel’s name. He missed her. He missed her a lot. But he was never going to end up with her. A part of him, he thought, had known that for months (or was it years, now?). “I can’t say I don’t love her,” he confessed. “But there’s a reason I was on the boat with Sara. I didn’t… Laurel wanted all these things for me that I didn’t. I made mistakes—a lot of them. Bad ones. But clearly that’s in the past, and I feel like if I want to get used to my new life, I kind of have to start trying.” 

Felicity sighed. “That’s the problem, Oliver: it’s _not_ in the past for you. I can’t just be in a pretend relationship with someone who doesn’t even want me.” 

“So what are you saying?” he asked. “Should I go?” Maybe (just maybe) he sounded a little too hopeful about that. Felicity wasn’t the only one who wasn’t keen on the idea of pretending to be in a relationship that he had no proof he was even happy in. Still, there were worse ways to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation, and he was meant to be discovering whatever he could about ~~future~~ present him (including whatever it was Felicity was hiding from him). 

“No, Oliver. That’s not what I’m saying.” 

“Then why don’t you get to know me? We can take things slower…” He leaned in to kiss her, but his lips had barely brushed hers before she was pulling away and stepping back, tugging her hand out of his grasp. 

“Stop. We can’t do this.” 

“So you don’t want me to go, but I try and be close to you, and you don’t want that, either.” He knew he shouldn’t be as frustrated as he was, but all of the confusion from the past twelve hours was just coming to a head, and he was starting to feel the same kind of anxiety he’d felt in the hospital last night boiling over. 

“No, Oliver. You tried to have sex with me. There’s a difference.” 

“I don’t know what you want from me.” He wanted to ask her what she was keeping from him, how she expected him to get to know her while she was, and how he was supposed to simultaneously be her fiancé and not be her fiancé and also come to terms with a decade of his life that he’d missed. And he didn’t know how to express any of it. 

“Treating me with some damn respect would be a good place to start. Even if you don’t remember it, and I don’t rank any higher to you than Max Fuller’s fiancée? I’m _your_ fiancée, not someone you use to escape from your problems with.” 

“You’re right, okay? I don’t remember you. I don’t have feelings for you. I don’t love you. Is that what you want to hear?” 

“What I _want_ to hear is you telling me you can behave like an adult while we figure all of this out. I know, all right? I know you’re not him, and I’m just… I’m trying to help you so you don’t do something you’ll regret—” 

“I _am_ him, Felicity!” Oliver cut in. “Like it or not, I’m Oliver. I’m the one you’re stuck with. This might be the only version of me you get, so you don’t get to tell _me_ what _I_ will and won’t regret.” The different versions of himself were starting to give him a headache; he imagined Felicity had to be feeling about the same just then. “I can’t just live my life the same way future me would; I need to be able to make decisions for myself.” 

Taking off her glasses and rubbing her temples, Felicity sighed. “I’m sorry. I get that this must be impossibly difficult for you, but it’s complicated on my end, too. And I still think there are other, better ways for us to get used to our relationship. I’ve gotta check in with work. Why don’t you go take a shower, and we can talk about it more when you come back.” 

She phrased it like a question, but it sounded more like a command. And Oliver, who normally hated being told what to do with every fiber of his being, was actually surprisingly comforted by having a solid direction. It was something to do: a plan and a focus, small as it was. So he nodded and followed Felicity’s directions upstairs to the master bathroom, his legs stiff and protesting the movement. 

He turned the water on first (after, of course, spending a couple of minutes trying to figure out how to work the unfamiliar shower dial), then decided it was pretty much now or never to take a look at all the scar tissue he’d felt, and he stripped off his shirt. 

It was worse than he expected. 

Long, ridged lines of twisted tissue littered his abdomen and arms, like he’d gotten in the way of some very large, angry animal (definitely a possibility, as he did have what looked suspiciously like a large bite mark scar over his hip). Or maybe it was a knife. Most of them looked as faded as they were probably ever going to get, but there was one, right in the middle of his stomach, that was clearly newer, still an angry red. 

Some of them covered an ornate, eight-pointed star tattoo on his chest, and Chinese lettering was inked down his side. 

(The translation of it made almost no sense: it read more like some kind of clichéd dialogue meant to ward off evil in a shitty horror movie than something someone would get tattooed on themselves. And, for that matter, how had he learned to read fucking _Mandarin_ well enough that he automatically knew what it said?) 

If his front was bad, it had nothing compared to his back. 

More scars, crossing over each other like they’d run out of room and had to start doubling up. His lower back was, in fact, a mess of twisted skin and what was clearly a bad burn, and suddenly all the soreness he’d been feeling made a lot more sense. The newest-looking scar had a twin directly opposite it in the middle of his back, like something had actually run _through_ him, and he wanted to throw up at the sight. It was, though, possibly less disconcerting than the arrow-shaped brand just below his shoulder blade. 

He was branded. 

By someone—something he couldn’t remember. 

What the fuck had happened to him? 

He tried to count the scars, and it was a terrible idea. They trailed all over his body, down his arms and legs even, and by the time he hit twenty, he had to stop, shaking. He didn’t think he had ever been grateful for something so simple as the steam from the shower fogging up the bathroom mirror, and he carefully avoided looking down as much as possible while he washed away as much as he could of the past twenty-four hours. 

&. 

Felicity waited for Oliver to leave the room, practically holding her breath in anticipation. This was bad. Really bad. Maybe worse than the time he’d faked being brainwashed by the League of Assassins and nearly permanently ruined his relationships with the entire team in the process. At least that time he’d been as aware and in control of his actions as he was able to be. 

(Although the lingering side effects of said brainwashing attempt coming out during their otherwise-wonderful summer together had certainly not been a picnic… but that was a different tangent for a different day.) 

Now… Oliver remembered nothing from his new life. 

If al Sah-him was bad, Ollie from before the island was _definitely_ worse, and Felicity knew what she had to do. 

She made herself comfortable on the couch, shifting and fluffing the throw pillows behind her until she was forced to admit that getting situated had turned into a stall tactic. Then she pulled out her phone and conference-called the rest of the team. 

Thea was the first to pick up. “Laurel’s with me, by the way. We’ve got you on speaker.” 

“Hi,” Laurel chimed in, both of their voices sounding tinnier and farther away than Diggle’s, who joined the call and spoke up next. 

“How’s he doing, Felicity?” 

“Not great. At all. He—we kind of got into a fight,” she admitted, trying to ignore the tears that pricked at her vision, threatening to fall. At least they were on the phone, and she could probably keep it out of her voice. 

“Already? Leave it to my brother,” Thea remarked with some level of exasperation. “I probably should’ve guessed. Ollie wasn’t—” 

“It’s Oliver: he’s always had the tendency to lash out a little when he’s panicking,” Laurel interrupted, smoothing over what was sure to be a much harsher point diplomatically. “How are _you_ doing?” 

“Been better. But that’s not why I’m calling. He went to take a shower, and I don’t know how long he’s gonna be, so we kind of need to be quick on it. I was thinking about everything we were talking about last night,” she pressed on, determined to drag the conversation into territory that wasn’t hallmarked by the fact that the love of her life didn’t really want anything to do with her anymore. “I don’t think we should tell him about Team Arrow at all.” 

“I still don’t really agree,” Thea returned. “He’s got a right to know about his life.” 

“Not if there’s a really good chance he’ll react badly to learning about it,” Diggle spoke up. “If he freaks out and takes this to the cops, we’re through.” 

“The last thing he’d do is take this to the cops,” Laurel countered, and Felicity’s heart hammered in her throat. If there was one person she figured she really needed on her side, it was Laurel, who arguably knew him best before the island, given how young Thea was when he “died” the first time. “But I’m on Felicity’s side with this.” 

Felicity breathed. Okay. Good. 

“Laurel!” Thea interjected. 

“No, Thea, hear me out,” Laurel continued. “The Ollie I knew? He wouldn’t have thought twice about doing something like being a hero.” 

Felicity nearly stopped her right there, but she held her tongue, reminding herself again that she needed Laurel on her side. 

“He would definitely freak out learning about any of this,” Laurel said. “It’d probably be a lot for him, and who knows _who_ he’d end up telling? Not the cops, but somebody. Probably. Or, think about it: we’ve made a lot of enemies. If someone found out or even suspected that he’s got ties to the Green Arrow or any of us… It’s safer that he doesn’t know. So he _can’t_ tell anyone.” 

They all fell silent for a moment. Felicity had no idea what was going through any of their heads, but her mind was now racing with an unstoppable and horrible list of hypotheticals of what would happen if Oliver— _this_ Oliver—were taken by one of their enemies. 

“I guess Laurel has a point,” Thea begrudgingly admitted. “I think maybe… for now… we can not tell him.” 

“We’ll have to keep a really close eye on him though. Oliver decided to run for mayor because he could take care of himself,” Diggle put in, voicing Felicity’s biggest concern. “He can’t anymore, and Star City mayoral candidates don’t exactly have the best life expectancy. Which,” he added, “I guess means I’m back on bodyguard duty.” 

“Thank you, John.” Felicity wasn’t even sure words would be enough to thank him for that. 

“I’m just glad it’ll be easier to keep an eye on him this time around.” 

Smiling, Felicity remembered the stories the two of them had told her; apparently Diggle’s first month as his bodyguard hadn’t been easy, what with Oliver using all his freakishly talented ninja skills to run away. She certainly _hoped_ this Oliver would have enough sense to stay put (was it bad that she didn’t have high hopes?). “Okay, good. Now that that’s taken care of… did you guys get any leads on what actually happened to him?” 

“I ran the programs you told me to,” Laurel replied, “and we did get some video footage from before Digg and I got to him. He was… he was pretty outnumbered, Felicity. It was definitely the Ghosts.” 

Great. Darhk’s men. “Is there anything Damien Darhk _isn’t_ behind in this city anymore?” Felicity grumbled, suitably unimpressed. 

“Unlikely,” Thea grumbled right back. 

“Could they have given him the concussion?” 

“They definitely got in a couple of good head shots,” Laurel said, “but I don’t think anything that would have been that severe of a concussion.” There was a weight to her words, one that instinctively told Felicity she wasn’t going to like what she heard next. “They got him on the ground. He might have been passed out; I’m not sure. And… then the feed started cutting out, which was weird, but they started… chanting, I guess would be the right word for it. It sounded like Latin. I wrote down what I could make out of it, but my Latin skills are severely limited to what little popped up in my Law classes.” 

“Latin?” Oh no. This was not good. Not good at all. “That kind of sounds like—” 

“Don’t say ‘magic.’” 

“Sorry, Digg. But… it kind of does,” Felicity said, biting her lip. Magic was way above their pay grade. The only one who really knew anything about it was Oliver, and even he didn’t know that much. He just knew… 

… He knew who to call. 

“I wiped Oliver’s phone of any and all Team Arrow references,” she said, “so he doesn’t find anything accidentally. But I kept a backup of all his data, and I’m going to try to find Constantine’s number. See if we can call him.” 

“I am definitely on board with any plan that requires hot guys to come back to town,” said Thea with a forced lightness to her tone that Felicity knew she didn’t really feel. 

“Good. I should probably get going.” She could no longer hear the shower running faintly in the background, and she figured she should wrap things up quickly. She did, after all, have a very confused fiancé to get back to. “Then it’s settled. We won’t tell him about the team, and first thing in the morning I will make that call.” 

“What call?” came a voice from behind her, and Felicity nearly jumped a mile out of her chair as she spun to find Oliver standing at the foot of the stairs. 

&. 

“Oliver!” Felicity hastily hit a button on her screen, setting the phone down on the table. “How… how long have you been standing there?” 

“Long enough,” he replied, intentionally leaving his answer vague. Whatever it was she’d been talking about, he clearly wasn’t meant to hear it, and that was bothering him more than he probably had a right for it to. “Why?” 

“No—no reason. I was just talking with the Palmer Tech board. I just needed to approve some things for some… proprietary information. You just… you startled me. That’s all.” As she spoke, she barely met his eyes, and Oliver decided she probably didn’t have much experience lying to people. ( _So why was she doing it now?_ ) 

“Well, is everything all set? I wouldn’t want to interrupt.” He offered her his very best innocent smile, the one he reserved for the cute cops he sometimes charmed to get himself out of trouble. 

“You’re not interrupting,” Felicity assured him, picking at a stray thread on her jeans. “I’m done working for the night. Feeling any better?” she asked, and he noted the way her gaze dropped to his still-bare torso. 

That glance was all it took to remind Oliver why he definitely still needed her for the time being. He came to join her on the couch, dropping the t-shirt he’d brought out with him on the coffee table, resting his elbows loosely on his knees. He had to lean forward to do so, and his back protested the position change automatically until he shifted back and straightened his spine as much as he was able. “Only a little. So, what’s with all the scars?” he asked, with a casualness he didn’t quite feel. “And the tattoos—I really didn’t peg myself for a tattoo kind of person.” 

“You got them on the island,” she replied in a hushed, almost pained tone. It was like she cared more than he did (though, to be fair, right now she probably _did_ ). “The scars, that is. I don’t know much about the tattoos. Well… I don’t actually know much about the scars, either. Not because you _wouldn’t_ tell me but because I don’t really ask. I know it’s hard for you to talk about, and…” 

“Felicity.” Oliver tried to match her tone, but soft and kind of comforting had never been his strong suit. “It’s fine. But I’m having a hard time with the idea that I survived life on a deserted island while apparently being the clumsiest shipwreck survivor ever.” He gestured to the various gashes. 

He looked down at the sudden warmth on his hand. Felicity had covered it with her own. “You weren’t alone there the whole time. You were… There were others, and they weren’t exactly good people. They were the ones…” 

“They tortured me,” Oliver said flatly. It was easy enough to see the evidence, horrifying to know he’d lived through something like that, but at the same time? It didn’t feel like it had happened to him; he couldn’t connect it. It was like the _knowledge_ that he’d been tortured over something and _feeling_ like he had were two repelling magnets he was trying to force together. And yet… His stomach churned uncomfortably, and he was a little dizzy suddenly. 

Felicity, for her part, was nodding, and there were unshed tears in her eyes behind her glasses. “I’m so sorry, Oliver. I know this must be really hard to hear.” 

“And what about this one?” he asked, pointing to newest one. “That one’s not five years old. And the brand?” Who the hell had been on that island with him? Who had done this after the island? Hopefully this was one of the things Felicity would actually be truthful with him about. 

“You know how I told you that there are these people who protect the city?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Well one of them who used to help them—the Arrow—” 

“Isn’t the Green Arrow still here?” Oliver interrupted. He was almost positive that was one of the names she’d told him (they all had really stupid names like they’d been picked out of the comic book reject pile). 

“Surprisingly? Not the same guy. But you were accused of being the Arrow at one point.” 

Oliver actually did laugh at that. Somebody actually thought he, useless billionaire playboy and shipwreck survivor, was some kind of masked “hero.” “Well, am I?” he asked, amused. 

Felicity laughed, too, but hers was almost too bright, too sharp. Oliver knew that he barely knew this woman, but for some reason he wasn’t finding it all that hard to read her. What she was hiding? That was a different matter. “Of course not. But… I can’t say the enemies of the Arrow didn’t think the same thing for a while.” 

“So that’s where the brand came from.” At least that answered that question. “So I see life didn’t exactly improve much for me on that front when I came home.” 

“Well, lucky for us you’ve told me they don’t really bother you anymore. But I can’t say you’re completely out of the woods: your mayoral campaign’s putting you in the spotlight a lot to fix a city that a lot of people are determined to see dead and buried.” 

“I hate to break it to you,” Oliver replied, “but I think I’ve been lying to you about the not-bothering-me thing because pretty much everything’s painful.” But before she even had a chance to say anything to that, the rest of her words caught up with him, and then he was standing, pulling his hand out of her grasp. “Wait, did you just say, ‘mayoral campaign’?” 

“Well...yeah,” she finished lamely. 

Oliver snorted an incredulous laugh. “I can’t run a _city_. Are you kidding me? I couldn’t even make it through college! Who the hell would elect me?” 

“You’re running unopposed,” Felicity replied as if that made it better. 

“Fuck. Felicity, I can’t do that. You have to know I can’t do that. I mean, if I’m literally the only candidate, the city must be desperate. And if the city’s that desperate, I’m not the right person to lead it.” 

His life was worse than he’d thought. Much worse. 

“You _are_ the right person to lead it, Oliver,” she protested, standing up and folding her arms across her chest. That hard, blazing look was back on her face, like the actual last thing she could imagine was letting Oliver freak out about an idea that the entire city had to have had fucking lobotomies performed on them to support. “So that’s why, until we can figure out this whole memory thing, we need to keep this quiet. We need your campaign to stay on track.” 

“No.” 

Campaigns. Mayor. _Him._

“Star City needs you.” 

“Star City needs a mayor who hasn’t punched or peed on a cop!” He wasn’t above using his own past run-ins with the police to win arguments. 

“Star City needs a mayor who cares about the people and their issues.” 

“Well, news flash, Felicity: that’s not me! Ask anyone.” If there was one refrain everyone in his life had about him—his parents, Laurel, Thea, all of his friends, his college professors, and basically everyone who wasn’t Tommy Merlyn—it was that he was selfish. “The city needs a mayor who actually wants to run the city.” 

“The _city_ needs a mayor who can stay alive long enough to do the job, and right now? That makes you uniquely qualified.” 

Oliver felt all the blood drain from his face. “What do you mean, ‘alive’?” 

Felicity clapped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t—I’m sorry. I… the other candidates haven’t… They’ve all died, Oliver.” 

He didn’t even know what to say to that, and it was a solid minute before he could find it in him to speak again. “So you mean to tell me I’m getting married, I’m running for _mayor_ in a city where all the mayors die, and I have…” he glanced down at his phone on the coffee table as he spoke, “...about ten friends total that I still talk to. One of them is my little sister, and two of them are my exes, and the others are people I don’t even remember meeting.” He huffed and sat down heavily in the chair. “The future sucks.” 

“Oliver.” He could tell the quip stung as soon as he said it, the hurt clearly audible in her tone, and were those tears in her eyes? 

“I’m sorry, Felicity, but what do you want me to say? ‘Hey, I’m really glad I woke up, and ten years have gone by, and my best friend’s dead, and by the way, so are my parents! Isn’t it _great_ that I hated the idea of settling down, and that’s all I seem to have done with my life?’” His tone escalated as he spoke, and he got up, putting too much pressure on his right knee, and it nearly buckled beneath him, sending radiating pain up his thigh. Wincing, it only made his next words harsher. “‘And as long as I’m listing out the positive things in life, we might as well add that I’m fucking disfigured on top of it.’ Is that what you want from me, Felicity?” 

She stood, too, squaring her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full height. The determination (if not her size) would have been admirable if everything wasn’t so covered by a haze of red anger. “I get it, Oliver,” she snapped. “This isn’t your first choice. Well, you know what? It’s not mine either. I signed up for a relationship with the man I’m supposed to marry, a man I’ve grown to love and _respect_ —someone who’s proud of the man he’s become—not some…” She made some kind of small, flailing hand gesture as she searched for the word. “... Some overgrown man-child whose first thought is how he can escape from a life that, if he’d been paying any attention at all, he’d realize he’s worked pretty damn hard for.” 

“You know what?” he started, but Felicity cut him off immediately, holding up a hand. 

“No. It’s my turn to talk. You keep insisting that you’re Oliver, and you are. You’re right. You’re not two different people, but like it or not, you’re in this life. Right here, right now. And if you don’t like it? I’m not keeping you here.” She stepped back, gesturing to the direction of the door. “You’re more than welcome to leave.” 

Ready with an angry retort, Oliver was caught off guard when she invited him to leave. “Fine.” He reached over and grabbed his shirt from the coffee table, pulling it over his head hastily. His phone followed suit, going straight into his pocket. “Then I guess I’m leaving.” He tried not to focus on the tears he could clearly see starting to run down Felicity’s cheeks. 

He couldn’t really focus on anything. Everything he’d just learned was crowding his head, and all he could think to do was get away. There was a rack of keys by the door, and he grabbed the one he recognized as a motorcycle key, hesitating just long enough to slip his shoes and a jacket on, and then he was slamming the door on his way out. 

Felicity hadn’t moved a muscle. 

It took Oliver a good ten minutes to find his Ducati in the complex’s parking garage, a good deal of that because of the dazed stupor he was wandering around in. And when he did find it, he knew there was only one place he wanted to go. 

He didn’t stop until he was at the apartment door. Third floor, a nondescript door in a hallway of calm neutrals, exactly where the contact in his phone said he should be, so he knocked on the door, movements sharp and frantic. 

It swung open a moment later. 

“Oliver, what are you…” 

Oliver ignored the sharp gasp as he pulled Laurel into a desperate kiss.


	3. Each Man Delights in the Work That Suits Him Best

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laurel gives Oliver a new perspective on things while Diggle supports Felicity. Later, a frustrated Oliver takes a break from studying his mayoral campaign to visit an old friend but soon runs into trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m super sorry this fic took a mini hiatus. I’ve had a bunch of personal things going on, and sometimes, thanks to some mental health issues, I have far worse weeks than others. I just hadn’t had the energy to really keep up with this at the pace that was intended, and I apologize. But here’s an extra-long chapter to make up for it? I have to say, I was a bit shocked at how many of you didn’t really seem to see where Oliver was coming from, given the limited information he has about his “future." I hope you enjoy the cliffhanger resolution from last time!

Kissing Laurel was nothing like he remembered.

For one thing, he wasn’t used to her shoving him away angrily. There was no give, no moment of shock that faded into an eager embrace. There was only cold rejection from the woman he’d spent half his life loving (and was it just him, or had she gotten a _lot_ stronger?). 

“What the hell are you doing?” 

“I’m sorry.” He struggled helplessly for the the words. He’d been assaulted from all sides with the idea that it was nine years later, that his life was different, and that everyone around him was different. That didn’t make it any easier to internalize. This was a version of Laurel who really didn’t love him anymore. 

His stomach twisted into an uncomfortable knot and a cold chill enveloped him like he’d just been hit with a bucket of ice water upon the sudden confirmation. He’d taken it for granted that Laurel would always love him, no matter how badly he’d fucked up or how many years had passed. No matter how disappointed his parents were with him or how many times the tabloids called him out on everything from the trouble he got into to his jeopardized future as the Queen family scion, Laurel had been there. Laurel had forgiven him. Laurel had loved him. 

“You’re engaged to Felicity,” she replied, crossing her arms. She looked different, Oliver decided, as he took a moment to really look at her for the first time. Her hair was shorter, shoulder-length and blonde now, but that wasn’t it. Something about her was leaner, harder, like maybe Oliver wasn’t the only one who’d seen some difficult times. 

“Believe me, everyone’s making that pretty hard to forget,” he returned petulantly. 

Laurel sighed. “This is why we’ve been over for years, you know.” But she opened the door wider anyways, standing back to make room for him. “Come in, but only if you’ll behave.” 

“Scout’s honor.” 

“You got kicked out of the Scouts,” she reminded him, and Oliver counted it as a tiny win that he could still make her smile. 

“Exactly.” 

He followed her inside, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings. The apartment was spacious enough, decorated in warm, dark tones and neutrals, neat but clearly lived-in. There was something so _Laurel_ about it, classy but homey at the same time. Nothing Oliver would have chosen for himself. 

“Make yourself comfortable,” she told him, and he turned toward her, hearing the click of keys on her phone. “I’m just letting Felicity know you’re here.” 

“Can you not, maybe?” That suffocating feeling was starting to come back, the one that had been weighing down on him since he woke up. It was the one he’d been looking to escape, the one that was reaffirmed every time he thought about the various details of his new life. 

Laurel finished typing and set her phone down on the coffee table, taking a seat on the chair across from where Oliver was sitting on the couch. “I just did. She’s probably really worried because knowing you, she has no idea where the hell you went.” 

“So?” Oliver challenged. “She’s just my fiancée. She doesn’t need to keep tabs on me 24/7.” 

“Take it easy on her. You’re not the only one adjusting to this, you know. And if she did want to keep tabs on you,” Laurel continued, arching a brow, “she would have a reason. Look at what your first stop was.” 

Oliver wanted to tell her she was wrong, but he wasn’t entirely sure that would be the truth. 

“This is the version of you I remember: the one who’s completely allergic to commitment,” she said. 

“That’s not fair. She can’t expect me to just pick up where future me left off. You can’t either.” 

Laurel scoffed, crossing her arms again and leaning back in her chair. “I know you’re not trying to play _that_ card with me, Ollie. You’re the one who still feels like it was just a couple of days ago that you decided to sleep with my sister. Maybe you’re not in love with Felicity right now, but you’re definitely not in love with me, either.” 

“That’s not true. I just—I panicked, Laurel. You were freaking me out with all the talk about moving in together and getting married and—” 

“Save it, Oliver,” she interrupted. “Listen, I already know you and Sara weren’t a one-time thing. You didn’t run off with her on a whim. You didn’t sleep with all those other girls just because I was scaring you, either.” There was no heat behind her words, just an old resignation. “I came to terms with this a while ago, now. Even if you did love me—and I think a part of you did—you didn’t _respect_ me. I deserved better than that back then, and more importantly? Felicity deserves better now.” 

“I don’t even _know_ Felicity.” He wished he had something better to tell her. He wished he could tell her she wasn’t right about the rest of it. 

“Then get to know her. Ollie, your memories… they’re going to come back. And when they do, you’re really going to want to know you didn’t mess this up for yourself.” 

“What if they don’t?” 

“They will. But say they don’t: what do you have to lose by trying to get to know your own life?” 

&. 

“Thanks for coming,” Felicity greeted Diggle when she answered the door. Judging by the concerned look on his face, she probably looked exactly as bad as she felt, which was a frightening thought all on its own. 

Probably as frightening as the idea of Oliver out there on his own doing God knew what with Damien Darhk’s target still on his back because wouldn’t it just be a _fantastic_ win for Darhk if he could take out the increasingly aggravating thorn in his side that was Oliver Queen the Mayoral candidate? 

And yeah, there was that whole gigantic matter of Oliver basically hating everything he knew about his life now—hating _her_ —and Felicity couldn’t even begin to think about that without crying (she’d already cried twice since Oliver left the apartment, and damn it, she was proud of herself for being able to stop long enough to call Diggle and then to answer the door when he got there). 

“You said Oliver walked out. We should be looking for him.” Diggle, as usual, projected the kind of calm, solid presence Felicity really, really needed in her life. He had that unique ability to compartmentalize that she normally associated with Oliver as well—that she associated with _herself_ as well. But this? 

“Laurel texted me,” she replied, shaking her head as she closed the door behind them. They made their way over to the couch, where Felicity had already set up a makeshift work station (she wasn’t willing to go all the way to the lair in case Oliver came home and needed her). “He’s… he’s with her. I probably should have figured that, given that the only thing he can even remember is being in love with her…” She hated the bitter note that crept into her tone, the betrayal that lurked underneath her words, accusing Oliver of something abstract that he hadn’t even done. And with Laurel, no less, who’d never been anything but a friend to her and had always supported her relationship with Oliver. 

“Felicity.” Diggle fixed her with a stoic, determined look, and his firm tone cut straight through all of her spiraling thoughts. “It’ll be okay. Oliver loves you. He’s going to remember that.” 

“But what if he doesn’t?” she asked, her vision blurring as yet another wave of tears hit. “What if… he never remembers anything we’ve been through together? And I’m… I’m just… I’m this constant reminder of this new life that he hates?” 

Felicity used to hate being “that” girl, the girl who couldn’t imagine life without her significant other or who fell apart at the thought that he wouldn’t want to be with her. She thought she’d gotten past it; she thought her mother was right when she said this was how it was supposed to be, that she and Oliver had lost themselves in each other, and it was okay. And they were supposed to be getting married; life without Oliver was something that was never supposed to be an option again. But right then, it was easy to remember all the reasons she’d never wanted to get to that point in the first place. 

_Her_ Oliver would never walk out on her, of that she was sure. 

This was not her Oliver. This was practically a stranger in his body, and as determined as she was to help him, Felicity was at a complete loss. 

This was just one of the many reasons she was eternally grateful for John Diggle, who wrapped her up in a big bear hug that almost made up for everything else. She stayed like that for a little, clinging to him and wishing a hug was simple enough to fix everything. 

It wasn’t. 

Eventually, once her tears had dried enough, she let go of him and gave him a still-kind-of-watery smile. “Sorry.” 

“Felicity, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” he replied. 

“Not even for getting your shirt wet?” 

“Not even for that.” 

She gestured to the computer screen, shifting their focus to where she had her laptop open and attempting to run any sort of facial recognition on the blurred security video stills they’d managed to get on Oliver’s attacker. “So far I’ve got nothing. No leads. It’s like—” She grimaced. 

“Like they’re ‘ghosts’?” Diggle finished for her with a wry smile. 

“Yeah. Except I’m not entirely sure they _were_ Darhk’s Ghosts. You were there,” she pointed out. “Was there anything you noticed?” 

“They were dressed like Darhk’s men. They were highly trained. I think we should call a spade a spade.” 

Felicity shifted, drawing one leg up as she angled her body to face Diggle. “Yeah, but since when have any of the Ghosts done anything but fight physically? If these guys were using spells, that’s… it doesn’t fit with their M.O.” Something was wrong; the logic wasn’t adding up, and if there was one thing Felicity was good at it was catching logical inconsistencies. Right now, she had to be good at that. She had to figure out what was done to Oliver and how to undo it. 

“It doesn’t, but maybe he’s as tired of being locked in this stalemate with us as we are,” Diggle pointed out. “He sends one guy to tip the odds in our favor, and…” He let the sentence trail off, not needing to finish it. 

“If that’s the case, than Darhk knows Oliver’s wandering around without a memory.” 

“No, he knows the _Green Arrow’s_ wandering around without a memory.” 

Oh God. Her heart hammered in her throat as she voiced her latest realization, “So if Oliver Queen is publicly announced to be suffering from amnesia…” 

“...Darhk’s gonna know Oliver’s the Green Arrow.” 

&. 

Oliver didn’t get back to the loft for another couple of hours. Thea apparently lived with Laurel now, and she’d gotten home just as Laurel was finishing up making her case as to why Oliver should get to know Felicity and give her a chance. Not wanting to think about the brand new, overly-domestic life he had waiting for him (and whatever secret his fiancée was keeping from him), he’d decided he’d much rather get to know his little sister better. Thea was all too receptive of that, and it had been entertaining, listening to her talk about their mother and telling funny stories about how she’d taken over ownership of Oliver’s nightclub (see, _that_ career option he could get behind), even about Tommy. 

Laurel’s smile got sadder when Tommy was the topic of conversation, and it had been a whole new level of strange hearing about how the two of them had dated—had been in love, even. Still, Oliver would take it, as weird as it was. These were people he knew and cared about, not a stranger who kept looking at him, expecting him to feel something for her while she lied to his face. 

He was finally kicked out when Laurel and Thea admitted to already having plans for the evening: girls night, so he was automatically uninvited. When he did finally get back, he opened the door only to come face to face with Felicity, who was grasping at the handle from the other side, her shoes on and bag in hand. 

“I’m sorry I left,” he said immediately, not entirely sure if he was sorry or if he just wanted to avoid a fight. But there was another thing he had to genuinely apologize for: once he’d relaxed a little and come down from his panic, the guilt had set in over what he’d tried to do (what he _would_ have done if Laurel hadn’t set him straight). “But I have to tell you—” 

“It’s fine.” She cut him off, sounding rushed and harried, and her eyes darted over his shoulder and into the hallway, like he was keeping her from doing something important. Maybe he was. 

“Kinda late to be going out.” He leaned against the doorframe casually, as if he didn’t notice he was blocking her way. All of his instincts were screaming at him—perhaps irrationally—that whatever this was had something to do with the secret she was keeping from him. 

“Yeah, well. It’s an emergency. A work emergency,” she amended hastily. 

Oliver may not have completed business school (or any school). He may not have remembered his brief stint as CEO of Queen Consolidated. He may not have been very aware of his dad’s work schedule when Robert had run the company. He was, however, fairly positive that work-related emergencies that happened in the middle of the night were few and far between, and almost none of them would require the presence of the CEO. 

“Anything I can do to help?” 

For a fleeting second, Felicity’s expression filled with the kind of poignant longing Oliver never would have associated with an offer to help out with his fiancée’s work problems. They both paused, caught in each other’s gaze for that moment, and an answering, far-too-profound sense of longing tugged at him to give her the right answer that he just couldn’t remember. Then Felicity’s phone chimed in her hand, and her harried CEO mask snapped back into place as she glanced down at the message. “You can get out of the way.” 

“Right.” He straightened up and moved into the loft to let her pass. “What time should I expect you home?” 

Felicity shot him a look laden with such heavy irony, he supposed he should feel just a little guilty for disappearing on her and then asking her to tell him when she was coming back. “Probably late; I wouldn’t wait up.” 

“Okay. Well, good luck with the emergency, then.” 

“Thanks.” Her phone chimed again, and she sighed. “See you later.” Before either of them thought about it, she leaned up, kissed him on the cheek and disappeared out the door. 

With an unfamiliar warmth spreading through him at the simple gesture, Oliver made his way inside, too tired to devote much more brain power to figuring out his new life. Maybe it could wait until tomorrow. Maybe he’d get his memories back. 

He fell asleep on the couch that night, waiting for Felicity to come home and watching grainy, breaking news footage of Black Canary, Spartan, and an archer in red whose name he didn’t catch. 

&. 

The next few days passed fairly uneventfully. 

Felicity kept the oddest hours; Oliver kept mostly out of her way. She did, though, insist on keeping Oliver’s amnesia completely secret. He supposed he could understand that, to a point. It _would_ really hurt his mayoral campaign, after all, but given that he had no idea when and if his memories would even return, Oliver was pretty sure the smartest move would be to drop out of the race altogether. 

“We cannot let him win,” Felicity reminded him yet again, more fiercely determined than he’d ever heard her up until that point. That was not a very impressive superlative, though, considering he’d only known her for four days. 

Dinner was already finished, sitting too heavy in his stomach: it was take-out, again, because Felicity didn’t know how to cook, and Oliver couldn’t say he even remembered stepping foot in a grocery store in his lifetime. Felicity assured him he’d become something of a fantastic chef, and Oliver had laughed so hard at that he’d nearly cried. It was even funnier when she told him that he also had developed a passion for healthy eating (but much less so when she’d come home to discover him battling severe cramps and waited until _after_ he confessed to eating half an extra-cheese pizza to tell him about the dairy intolerance he’d developed from the island). 

They were now in the middle of his least favorite time of day: Oliver Queen lessons. 

Yes, he had to have _lessons_ to learn how to be himself to fool the general public and even his own campaign staff, including his political strategist, who Oliver was quite positive would think all of this was a terrible, terrible strategy. 

Oliver had just frustratedly thrown down his binder of his positions on various issues, none of which he could say he really cared about. “I’m running unopposed!” 

“I know, Oliver.” Felicity ran a hand through her hair, supposedly to smooth it out but actually freeing more strands from her messy ponytail. “I’m not talking about an opponent; I’m talking about Damien Darhk.” 

Oliver had watched the clip of himself announcing Darhk as the city’s enemy. Nothing was more surreal than seeing video footage he didn’t remember being in (and not the kind he was used to where he assumed he was just blackout drunk and went with it). The guy seemed terrifying, given that the news report that little speech was a part of was just after a drone attack on Oliver’s campaign efforts to clean up ~~Starling~~ Star City bay. 

“Yeah, I don’t know if it’s smart to be taking this guy on when I don’t even remember why I’m doing it.” Felicity opened her mouth to reply, but he cut her off. 

“And no, you explaining to me why I’m doing it doesn’t count.” 

“You cannot lose this election. You cannot drop out of this election. You as mayor, even without your memories, is a million times better than Damien Darhk getting control of the city.” 

Her passion was endearing, Oliver decided, even if it was entirely misdirected. “I don’t know; it seems like a lose-lose situation to me.” 

“It’s not,” she began to protest, and he really didn’t think he could deal with their nightly song-and-dance. It was the same argument. Every night. 

“Felicity,” he interrupted, “do you think we could maybe pick this up later?” 

“We just started.” 

“It’s been almost an hour since we started,” he said. “I just think I need to go out. Clear my head.” He probably should have told her exactly where it was he wanted to go, where he’d be if she needed him, but Felicity tended to overreact at even the slightest mention that he wanted to be anywhere but practically bubble-wrapped and sitting around the house. 

She stifled him. 

He needed his freedom; he was practically itching for it, for the days where he had no one to answer to but himself. 

“It’s late, Oliver. Is that really the safest option right now?” Felicity raised an eyebrow, the look on her face as pointed as her tone. 

“I just… I need to get out.” He was already getting up from the table, heading for the door. A switch had gone off in his head, one that flicked on the lightbulb of a thought that he was a grown man—in his thirties now, even—and didn’t need to ask for anyone’s permission, least of all his fiancée’s. 

“Then at least tell me where you’re going or when you’re going to be back. I can have Diggle here in five minutes, and he can drive you…” 

Oliver pulled on his shoes, not bothering to go for a set of keys. “I’m not driving anywhere, Felicity. I just want to take a walk.” 

A walk with a very specific destination. 

“A walk where?” 

“ _Out_ ,” he repeated, harsher than he intended, but even the open loft was starting to close in on him, making it harder for him to breathe, and the further away he got from the various binders and notes that told him how to be Oliver Queen, the better. 

&. 

The walk to the graveyard took longer than expected. Still, it was twenty minutes that he was more than grateful for: twenty minutes to clear his head and let the panic start to recede. The streets of Star City were unusually quiet, a haunting reflection of all his campaign notes about the droves of people moving away, deserting what they still thought was a hopeless cause. 

_It_ wasn’t _a hopeless cause_ , Oliver thought, the vehemence sudden and fierce, surprising him. He’d always enjoyed living in Starling, but he’d never felt more of a passing loyalty for the city, generally expressed in support for the local sports teams above everything else. Now, if all went according to plan, he’d be taking over City Hall which meant… a whole lot of responsibilities. 

The thought of being Mayor once again made him practically dizzy with anxiety, which hadn’t been helped when he’d Google-searched “ _what do mayors do?_ ” earlier that day. 

Yeah, a break was absolutely necessary. 

His quiet surroundings made a lot more sense with the presence of soft, freshly-mowed grass and the eerie presence of tombstones all around him. A chill trickled down his spine. He felt like they were watching him through an eyeless gaze: judging and accusatory, wondering why they marked the final resting places of those so much less deserving of death than the man who walked among them. 

The guilt was new for Oliver, and ever-present since he’d come out of the hospital, gnawing at his every waking thought. The reasons for it lay as maddeningly out of reach as the reasons for why he knew for a fact he couldn’t trust anyone around him. Not Felicity. Not Laurel. Not even Thea. 

Maybe it was because everything he’d learned about himself started with his miraculous rescue from an island in the North China sea. 

Maybe it was because some part of him knew he should have died there, a castaway of his own making, a product of his poor choices. 

Maybe it was because instead of him, it was his mother and father who had tombstones instead of newspaper headlines marking their name and place in this world. 

Maybe it was because his best friend died protecting a woman he, Oliver, should have been there to protect. 

Tommy Merlyn’s name glared out at him from where it was etched in cold stone, barely legible in the dark cemetery, sitting just above the dates that taunted Oliver, reminding him how his best friend had been ripped from this world too soon and he’d been in it too long. 

“You’re really here,” Oliver started, feeling a little awkward because he’d never talked to a grave before. He’d never talked to Tommy like this before, knowing he’d never get an answer. “I guess… I don’t know. It didn’t feel real before.” If Tommy were here, he knew, they’d both silently agree to ignore the embarrassing crack in his voice. 

“Do I come visit you a lot? I hope I do. But I have no idea. My life’s a mess right now, and I can’t remember basically anything about it, and I—you know, I don’t even know the last thing I ever said to you.” 

He knelt down, touching a hand to the cold stone, and flinched away from how lifeless and cold it felt underneath his fingertips. “Laurel told me everything that happened between you guys. I’m… it was kinda weird for me to hear, but I’m happy for you. Or, I would have been. I think. I hope. I have no idea.” He shook his head, looking down at his hands; the inscribed “2013” wasn’t something he could face for too long. 

“I guess you and Laurel weren’t the only ones who fell in love. Apparently I’m getting married—her name’s Felicity. Everyone… everyone says I really love her, and I guess I should believe them. But she’s lying to me about something.” The whole story poured out before he could really stop himself or second guess what he was saying, like somehow, even though he was just talking to a rock, it maybe also felt like he was still talking to his best friend. “I don’t know what, but ever since I woke up in the hospital… I heard her talking to Thea, telling her not to tell me something that Thea thinks I have a right to know. And it’s strange because I feel like I can tell when she’s lying, and I don’t even know how. Well, other than the fact that she’s kind of obvious about it, but how am I supposed to trust someone who won’t even tell me the truth?” 

He paused, hearing the irony in his own words, knowing Tommy would call him on it. In fact, Tommy’s expression sprang to mind easily, a smirk-and-raised-eyebrows combo that wouldn’t even need accompanying words. 

“I know: me complaining about a girl lying.” Oliver sighed. “Probably some kind of karmic justice, right? And I get that—I do. But this is different; it’s not really a normal situation in the first place. It’s obviously something important. It’s… I don’t even know how to trust anyone anymore, and it doesn’t help that the only thing—the _one_ thing—I’ve found out for myself that someone hasn’t told me about her is that she’s keeping some huge secret. How am I supposed to trust her? Or love her?” 

Maybe it was easy to picture Tommy’s expressions, or the things he might say, or what he might do. But it suddenly struck Oliver, in the frustration of the moment, that it was only ever going to be his imagination. Tommy was never going to be there to say or do any of those things again, and Oliver felt like screaming, like letting the useless rage that had been simmering for days boil over and just… 

His fingers twitched, a habit he seemed to pick up from somewhere he couldn’t define. All he knew was that he itched to hold onto something, like a phantom ache for an object he couldn’t place. Something was missing, something that would feel weighed and right in his hands and make the world make sense again, and now he was probably never going to know what it was, and his best friend was dead and buried in the ground and all he had was this useless fucking headstone. 

He had no idea how long he’d been kneeling there, but it probably hadn’t been as long as it should have been for getting up to ache that badly. Despite the generally present pain in his knee and the twitch in his fingers and the stiffness in his neck and the burn between his shoulder blades, Oliver felt full of a pent up energy that he needed a release for. 

Maybe he’d run home. 

Maybe he’d do something new, something befitting the steady rise of adrenaline coursing through his veins. He wondered if it was normal in his new life to want to do something crazy and reckless, like drive his motorcycle too fast or start a fight or… 

… Or something else. 

Muttering a half-hearted goodbye to a grave marker that couldn’t hear him, Oliver headed for the cemetery’s exit, his thoughts wrapped up in trying to find an answer to his restlessness. 

The attempts were in vain, however, and trying was like worrying a toothache, the dull throbs of pain more aggravating than stinging. He barely paid attention to where he was going, trusting his feet to do the thinking for him. 

Oliver had never felt unsafe in his own city. It was something that remained true even now that he’d heard how dangerous it was or how everyone running for mayor had died. Maybe it was because he’d never had a reason to feel unsafe; money didn’t buy everything, but being a member of one of the country’s wealthiest family did wonders for one’s sense of security. 

Still, as he roamed the dark and quiet streets, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off, like he was being watched. Flickers and shadows caught his eye, but whenever he stopped and turned there was nothing out of the ordinary. There were only closed stores and street lights and the few other people who dared to be out in the Glades at night who occasionally seemed to recognize him and give him either a friendly wave or a dirty look. Oliver wondered idly when it was he’d crossed into the Glades. 

Instincts tugged at him, a now-familiar twist in his gut that he could recognize as paranoia (but why should now be any different when that particular feeling was constant?). Still, he found himself scanning the area as he walked, mentally assessing the threat level of every person he passed by and coming up with potential escape routes faster than he could even process how he was doing it in the first place. This wasn’t normal behavior, was it? 

Had all of Felicity’s lectures about danger started to sink in and make him start questioning everything? Why couldn’t he shake the feeling that something was definitely wrong this time? 

Oliver was pulled out of his swirl of anxious thoughts when he finally recognized exactly where it was he’d wandered off to on autopilot. The building was dark, no lights inside or out, but a half-broken sign hung overhead, displaying its name for anyone who cared to look. 

Verdant. 

That was the name of the nightclub Thea told him they’d both owned at one point. The one he’d run with Tommy. Oliver wondered if maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence he’d ended up here after visiting the graveyard. Maybe, however unlikely it was, something about it had jogged a subconscious memory. 

He never got the chance to contemplate it further. 

A huge, masked man—at least as tall as Oliver and probably twice as broad—was in front of him so quickly, Oliver couldn’t even quite be sure where he came from. He’d practically appeared out of nowhere like some kind of… 

Ghost. 

Fuck. This was it. This was one of the people Felicity had been consistently warning him about, and he had a gun in Oliver’s face, and Oliver was probably about to die and… 

… and he didn’t stop to think. He reacted. 

The entire world narrowed its focus, like the quick glance Oliver had automatically done had read and dismissed the rest of the scene already, processing information so fast it seemed like he skipped the reasoning process entirely. 

Oliver stepped to the side— _Get out of the line of fire_ —and wrapped his arm over and around the Ghost’s, locking it in place and jerking the gun out of his grip. Continuing the motion, he spun backwards and in, using his free arm to elbow the guy in the side. He didn’t bother questioning how he knew where the pressure point was. Oliver hooked his arm firmly into the Ghost’s other arm, bent his legs, and threw the guy on the ground. 

The Ghost was on his feet again faster than Oliver thought possible. He’d barely had time to throw the gun out of reach. Some dazed part of him that seemed to have taken a back seat to his body’s automatic responses wondered why he was throwing away the weapon he’d just secured. But his reflexes apparently had a disdain for guns that his rational mind didn’t know about. 

Oliver only knew he wanted to fight this himself. An odd calm rushed over him that felt more right than anything else had since he’d woken up in the hospital as the Ghost came at him again, landing a punch squarely into Oliver’s ribs, and pain blossomed, and he felt _alive_. 

They traded blows, each matching the other in increasing intensity, the Ghost blocking every attempt Oliver made to go for the head, to shut off the only part of the body that was really attacking him. Oliver blocked his own fair share of hits and finally landed one of his own, a punch to the corner of the jaw, striking from the side. Best chance for a break. The Ghost faltered for a split second, and Oliver seized the opportunity, going in for a open-handed strike to a pressure point on both biceps, continuing the movement and wrapping each arm up in a lock. The technique brought him in close—too close—and he didn’t see the smash kick to his bad knee coming. 

Oliver’s leg faltered from underneath him, and his grip loosened as he cried out in pain. The Ghost was immediately out of his grip, taking advantage of his opponent’s distress, and then Oliver found the other man behind him, engulfing him in a one-armed chokehold. 

He tried to breathe in but couldn’t, his air supply completely cut off. The adrenaline surged, and his heart pounded, the only sound in his ears. 

_Survive._

The word resounded in his thoughts, and somehow his father came, unbidden, to mind. Dark spots threatened to overtake his vision. His father would want him to live. His father wanted him to survive. 

He had to get air. 

Oliver struck the Ghost’s elbow with an open palm, pushing and giving himself just enough room to gasp in a mouthful of air and slide himself out of the grip. He held the Ghost’s hand in place as he did, twisting it up into a straight-armed hold, fingers pointed up towards the sky, causing the Ghost to double over. One well-aimed hit broke the arm just above the elbow. Even with his arm hanging an unnatural angle, the Ghost didn’t make a sound, and the lack of it chilled Oliver to the bone. 

Another hit to the face tilted the Ghost’s head back, and it was easy for Oliver to get behind him and pull him into a two-armed hold. The right amount of pressure snapped the neck, and the body dropped to the ground. 

It was only then, standing in the deserted alley, that the last few minutes caught up with him. The weight of what he’d just done hit him like a ton of bricks. How had he known how to do any of that? What was he thinking? How was he still alive? How was… 

His heart hammered in his chest as his lungs worked overtime to get him enough air. He was panting, both trying to catch his breath and probably hyperventilating. This wasn’t the ruthless cold feeling of just a minute earlier. No, this time the rest of the world fell away because he was slipping into a mixture blind panic, shock, and absolute horror. 

Trembling hands pulled his phone out of his pocket as Oliver looked around frantically. The alley behind Verdant was deserted. There was no one who could possibly see him, and, completely given over to instinct, there was only one person he thought about calling. 

“Hello?” She picked up after the first ring, her voice sharp and alert. 

She was probably waiting for him to call, he realized idly. 

“Felicity. I—I think I just killed somebody.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points to anyone who recognized Oliver's disarming technique! ;)


End file.
